Early end led to an incomplete count in some areas

The early end to the 2020 census has some areas complaining they needed more time to count residents in a chaotic environment of coronavirus shutdowns and storm evacuations.

Parts of Louisiana and tribal lands in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah face the biggest gaps in the pandemic-shortened count. But Manhattan in New York City and parts of New England, Mississippi and North Carolina also fell short of average completion rates. The count in those areas will have to be finished using estimates from administrative records and other techniques.

The Census Bureau stopped accepting responses on Oct. 15 after the U. S. Supreme Court ended court challenges seeking to extend the count another two weeks. The Trump administration, after initially asking Congress for more time because of the pandemic, did a turnabout in July and asked to speed up the count and exclude people living here illegally from congressional apportionment.

The Census Bureau claimed a 99.98% completion rate nationally when the count ended Oct. 15, but some areas did not reach that level. Local leaders in places where there was an undercount complain that they could lose federal funding and congressional representation, both of which depend on the census.

The census error rate has improved in recent decades, from a 1.6% net undercount in 1990 to a 0.49% net overcount in 2000, to a net overcount of onetenth of 1% in 2010. But even in 2010, the Black population was undercounted by 2% and Hispanics by 1.5%, the bureau found. Native Americans living on reservations were the most undercounted, by 4.9%.

“It is disappointing to hear numbers are coming in lower than anticipated,” said Shreveport Mayor Adrian Perkins, a Democrat. “Considering all the challenges we have faced in 2020, any extra time for the census would have been helpful.”

Parts of Louisiana, raked by storms just as the count was wrapping up, took the biggest hit in followup visits needed to count people who didn’t respond voluntarily. The western part of the state, which the bureau calls the Shreveport Census Office and includes 32 counties north of Lake Charles, finished only 93.9% of its followup work, according to census statistics.

Those suing for more time included cities and counties in California, Illinois, Texas and Washington, as well as the Navajo Nation and other tribes.